'Guild Wars 2' Fastest Selling Western MMO Of All Time, Looks To China

ArenaNet and market research firm DFC Intelligence, announced that Guild Wars 2 "ranks as the all-time fastest selling Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) in Europe North America and Europe" according to the developer.

The game sold over 3 million units in its first nine months on the market.

“After triangulating against multiple data sources, it’s clear that Guild Wars 2 is the fastest-selling Western MMO of all time based on the first nine months of availability”, said analyst David Cole of DFC Intelligence. “This puts Guild Wars 2 in an impressive position when they release in China, where we’ve seen similar franchises really take off."

KongZhong already operates games such as World of Tanks in China, as well as other non-game related services such as the Opera web browser.

The Chinese MMO market has been flourishing in recent years, and ArenaNet has the potential to make deep inroads in that country, especially since Guild Wars 2 requires no subscription beyond the initial purchase.

With many Chinese gamers leaving Activision-Blizzard's (NASDAQ:ATVI) World of Warcraftfor free-to-play alternatives, Guild Wars 2 may have a unique opening in the Chinese market.

Personally, I think Guild Wars 2 has the best revenue model from a consumer standpoint of any MMO on the market.

The fact that it's not free-to-play means virtually all the game's content is available from the get-go, as opposed to many free-to-play alternatives with content stuffed behind paywall after paywall.

The fact that I don't need to pay a subscription to play the game means I can take a couple months off without feeling like my money is being spent on something I'm not using. It absolves me of that minor guilt and saves me money at the same time.

Beyond that, the $60 price-tag for Guild Wars 2 is just one third of the cost of a year's subscription to World of Warcraft. With bi-weekly content updates, ArenaNet has ensured that the game stays fresh.

That isn't to say it's a perfect game. There are lots of things I'd change with my magic wand if I could. But I've been very impressed with the developer's commitment to support the title and expand upon the world of Tyria well beyond its release even without a subscription model in place. It's almost a shame they didn't think to include more tools for players, however, because curated player-generated content could have made the grueling development schedule so much more tolerable.

The Queen's Speech is the latest content update for the game. It launches August 20th and brings new World vs. World content, the end of "culling" in PvE which will mean more characters on screen at once, and more. It follows on the heels of The Queen's Jubilee.